Pages

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Reading with Children

There was a very interesting article, "Crossover books," in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday.Eric Ligon was frustrated by Braille book formats that made it difficult to read with his 8 year old, blind son.

His answer to the problem was to design a new format for Braille picture books. BrailleInk has two titles so far, Guess How Much I love you by Sam McBratney and Anita Jerama and The Dot, a brilliant book by Peter Reynolds.

Of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the United States, about 55,200 are children, according to Wolffe's foundation. About 5,500 of those children use mainly Braille. Others may have enough sight to read print or might use books on tape.

Tanya Holton, vice president for development at National Braille Press, said more legally blind schoolchildren should be encouraged to learn Braille.

"The more books that blind children have access to, the better," Holton said. "There is a whole generation of young blind adults who don't know how to read (Braille)."